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Schools & colleges

Barbican Box

Barbican Box is a portable box filled with the ingredients for making and creating original theatre, visual art or music inspired by our world class arts programme.

Barbican Box launched in 2011 as a theatre education programme for secondary schools and FE colleges in east London. Now in its 6th year, Barbican Box works in music, theatre, and the visual arts across 40 secondary, SEN schools and FE colleges in east London with a national programme currently being piloted in Manchester

Created in collaboration with artists and associate companies such as Serious, Max Richter, Complicite and Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the Boxes contain a range of stimuli designed to encourage an imaginative, adventurous approach to arts learning.

Programme structure

Barbican Box is a six month process and begins with CPD (continuing professional development) training for teachers, after which the Box is sent into schools for teachers to begin working with their students.

Teachers are matched up with an artist mentor who delivers in-school workshops at the beginning, middle and end of the creative process. Students come to the Barbican to see a production, musical performance or exhibition and the project culminates with students returning to the Barbican to showcase their original work.

Past Barbican Box projects

Watch: Barbican Box Music with Max Richter

Curated this year by Max Richter, who has worked directly with mentors and the young musicians themselves, students from east London used the Box to explore the idea of ‘reflections on yourself’.

Watch: Barbican Box Showcase

A creative education programme designed for secondary schools and FE colleges, Barbican Box aims to ignite, support and facilitate music, theatre and visual art making in schools through a process of devising and creating work from scratch.

Each year, we commission a theatre artist or company to design a box with ideas, inspirations and provocations to spark imagination in young theatremakers and performers. In 2013, renowned masters of storytelling Complicite accepted the challenge.

In 2014, we welcomed back innovative theatre company, and pioneers of collaborative theatre making, Complicite, to curate a unique box with one objective – to help inspire and create exciting theatre with young people throughout London.

Barbican Box Music

Barbican Box Music is the perfect tool to inspire musical collaboration in class and this year will work with Native Instruments a leading manufacturer of software and hardware for computer based music making and DJing. With CPD training and in-school workshops, Barbican Box Music facilitates students and their teacher to create their own music, culminating with students arriving at the Barbican to present their original work in our Concert Hall. Artists use a variety of everyday objects and technology, plus traditional instruments, to create their music and this year the box will act to inspire teachers and students to push the boundaries of what is possible in the music classroom.

This year's box aims to reconnect the classroom with the young people's world outside of school and will encourage everyone to rethink the perception of their immediate surroundings. Working with Native Instruments and artists from the grime industry, teachers will receive tuition in using the box and the equipment provided in it, plus support in the classroom to develop yours and your students skills in making music.

Past artistic mentors have included Max Richter, Bellatrix and Soweto Kinch. 2019 artists to be announced soon, but will be from the grime industry.

Applications for our 2018-2019 programme have closed.

The programme runs from January - April 2019 and is designed for music teachers in secondary schools who wish to develop their own skills in composition, music production and that of their students. The programme will provide:

The Barbican Box itself and all the contents in it (note some objects may be on loan)

An accompanying teacher pack, plus support throughout the project to deal with queries quickly

Four teacher training sessions led by Native Instruments

Artist mentor visits to the school to support the creative process, the teacher and students

A visit to the Barbican Concert Hall, followed by performance & Q&A with professional grime artist and producer who will be visiting the schools and performing in the showcase

A showcase for the participating students at the Barbican Concert Hall, open to the public

Past Barbican Box Music projects

Inspired by the life of adventuring music collector and folklorist Alan Lomax, the inaugural Barbican Music Boxarrived in East London schools, inciting the same adventurous spirit in students as they used its contents to compose their own music.

Each year, we select an artist to curate a Barbican Box, inspiring music making and creativity in young people around London. In 2016, UK beatboxing champion Bellatrix led the students through an exploration of ‘having a voice’...

Barbican Theatre Box in partnership with Home

Barbican Box at HOME offers Barbican Box to schools and colleges across Greater Manchester. Barbican Box at HOME aims to ignite and support theatre making in schools through a process of devising and creating work from scratch, giving students the opportunity to express their unique voices through the process of creating original work.

This takes the form of a physical Box, curated by our 2019 artistic partner – Slung Low, which is opened up for teachers and students to reveal the ingredients for creating a piece of theatre. These objects act as stimuli, ideas and provocations that are designed to encourage an imaginative and adventurous approach to creating new work, giving students the opportunity to express their unique perspectives on the world around them in the process.

Applications for our 2018-2019 programme have closed.

The programme includes:

• Teacher training at HOME
• Learning resources
• In-school workshops
• Mentoring sessions
• A showcase performance for students at HOME

Past Barbican Box Primary Projects

As part of the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, we commissioned a special edition of Barbican Box, filled with objects designed to incite creativity. Take a look at this film, created by Year 2 pupils from Sir John Cass Primary School.

Barbican Box Visual Art

The Barbican Box Visual Art is a multi-arts project that draws inspiration from Barbican’s visual arts programme. Students and teachers visit the Barbican and take part in a series of artist-led workshops and activities. The box mixes a range of art forms and student’s work is shared as part of our annual Art Box publication. In the past these publications have included art books, cards, magazines and zines.

Applications for our 2018-2019 programme have closed.

The programme includes:

Teacher training at the Barbican

Visits to a Gallery exhibition

Learning resources

Workshops

School visits + editing sessions

Mentoring sessions

Professionally printed publication

Final publication launch and exhibition in Cinema Café and a Final Evaluation

Listen: Art Gallery Talks

Listen to the creators, curators and the people inspired and influenced by our prestigious programme of international exhibitions and events with recordings from our talks and lectures series plus exhibition guides from our curators.

Barbican Box Primary

Barbican Box has been running in secondary schools for 6 years in music, theatre and visual art. In 2016/17 we introduced a multi-artform primary school Box taking inspiration from the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, working with 4 primary schools.

We recommend this project for students years 2–5.

Applications for our 2018-2019 programme have closed.

The programme is designed for teachers in primary schools who wish to develop their own skills in composition and that of their students to:

Support and facilitate creative arts practice in schools

Introduce young people to imaginative and adventurous approaches to the arts

Support and enrich the delivery of school curriculum

Connect schools with the City’s cultural organisations including Barbican and its world class arts programme

Enhance literacy through creative writing

Promote creativity within the classroom

Provide and promote ongoing training and development for teachers

Encourage and nurture a lifelong relationship with the arts

Barbican Box Theatre

Each year, Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning commission a world class theatre company with an established relationship with the Barbican to design and curate the Barbican Box, providing an artistic starting point from which teachers and students devise their own piece of theatre.

This takes the form of a physical Box, which is opened up to reveal the ingredients for creating a piece of theatre. These objects act as stimuli, ideas and provocations that are designed to encourage an imaginative and adventurous approach to creating new work, giving students the opportunity to express their unique perspectives on the world around them in the process.

Applications for our 2018-2019 programme have closed.

The programme includes:

Teacher training at the Barbican

Visit to a theatre production

Learning resources

In-school workshops

Mentoring sessions

A showcase performance for the participating students at the Barbican

Past Barbican Box Theatre projects

Watch: Barbican Box Theatre - Toneelgroep Amsterdam

We speak to Toneelgroep Amsterdam's Artistic Director, Ivo van Hove and the Barbican Box producers along with some of the participating teachers and students, to learn more about the impact of this year's project.

In 2016, the box was curated and created in association with Toneelgroep Amsterdam, who had their first residency at the Barbican in 2017, with three productions directed by Ivo van Hove, the company’s Artistic Director.

In 2015, Complicite chose the theme of Political Power. Packed with newspapers, camcorders, banners, ballot papers and The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s briefcase, the Box was opened and it was over to the young theatremakers to take control.